NP: Bat For Lashes, Two Suns

Some results are in. The Washington Post cites a bunch of sources, then cites "experts" who say the biggest shopping day will come in mid-December, "when free shipping promotions end." That's not an accurate description, in my experience, as it's been the second or third Monday after Thanksgiving, regardless of who offers what when.

Parsing the numbers is proving to be tricky, in part because of the timing of some of the reporting. The WaPo article cites Coremetrics reporting average order size up about ten dollars over last year, while a Chicago Sun-Times article also uses Coremetrics numbers, but says there were more shoppers spending less per order. But the Post also cites the National Retail Federation with a nugget about the increase in traffic being particularly strong from 5pm to midnight, while the Sun-Times data only went through 5:30pm on Monday. Bloomberg reports the overall number for the day from Coremetrics as a 16 percent increase, which is maybe a percentage point or two more than I would have expected.

I can only see an excerpt of the Wall Street Journal's Cyber Monday piece, but it looks like they've got 5 percent growth according to comScore, but we'll see if that, along with the big Black Friday numbers, forces Gian Fulgoni to revise his company's forecasts for the whole season.

UPDATE: Reuters has more of the comScore numbers.